The probability is very high that the next Canadian federal election will happen before the next Alberta provincial vote.

So, will Premier Alison Redford's Tories just sit on their hands? Or will they get out and actively work against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's so-called Conservative Party of Canada, whose Alberta MPs so openly betrayed their provincial kin in the election that took place on April 23?

This will become an increasingly important question as the next federal election approaches -- especially if the NDP under Thomas Mulcair manage to hang onto or increase their edge in the national polls.

There's an elephant in the room whenever Albertans of a conservative political bent get together in the same place: the extensive and committed relationship between the far-right Wildrose Party and the equally radical neo-Con federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Neither right-wing Alberta party really wants to talk publicly about it, but it can't please the Progressive Conservative government under Premier Alison Redford, which sees itself with justice as the province’s natural governing party, to watch federal support and personnel flowing to the Wildrose Party under former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith.

Surely the federal political news story of 2012 is going to be the effort by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives to use social media to woo the Canadian public.

You may think the fact the federal Tories are considering this is a pretty strange claim, but I'm actually not making it up. I read it the other day in the Globe and Mail while I sat in a coffee shop.

The Liberal race grows closer?

With the Alberta Liberal leadership vote now under way online and due to be counted Saturday, and the Conservative first ballot a mere 10 days away, both races are starting to heat up, with some interesting developments on the front line.

Former Conservative Dr. Raj Sherman, who some reports said has signed 18,000 supporters, has seemed a cinch to win the Liberal race since party officials threw it wide open, U.S. primary style.

Now that the air is clouded with spin, let's review the results of the Environics poll published by a couple of Alberta newspapers last week.

Spin is to be expected from political parties whenever a new poll really shines some light on what's going on. Naturally, professional spinmeisters try to spin the results their party's way because that's what they're paid to do. Their tame journalist friends do the same thing because … well, who knows? Because they, or someone they work for, sees some benefit in it, presumably.

That's it? Trust us? Trust us?

That, according to the mainstream media, was the substance of Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith's message to Albertans at the start of the oddly named party's annual convention in Calgary Friday night.

Smith told her far-right party's faithful that she knows "simply telling you to trust me ... is not enough. …

Ryan Hastman has had his Dan Quayle moment.

Hastman, 31, is the Conservative Party's star candidate in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding, chosen to appeal to the electoral district's large population of university students and thereby unseat New Democrat Member of Parliament Linda Duncan in the May 2 federal election.

As the only New Democrat elected in Alberta, which as stated in the Gospel According to St. Stephen Harper is supposed to be an unbroken sea of Conservative blue, Duncan is an irritating burr under the prime ministerial saddle.

Talk about coming back like your proverbial bad penny! Sebastien Togneri just keeps turning up ... then having to resign.

He first had to resign in disgrace in the fall of 2010 when he was an aide to Christian Paradis, who in turn was a member of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative cabinet.

Any normal province as poorly served by its Members of Parliament as is Alberta would surely turn the deadwood out.

But then, in any normal province a candidate as promising as the energetic Ruth Kelly would be a cinch to beat an underperformer like Edmonton-Spruce Grove Conservative MP and federal Labour Minister Rona Ambrose.

When the Edmonton-Strathcona riding once held by former Conservative high-flyer Rahim Jaffer unexpectedly fell to the New Democratic Party last October, it was pretty clear the federal Conservatives would pull out all stops to get it back next time.